Khollo grinned. “No worries, there’s plenty here for both of us.” He accepted the proffered limb and frowned. He’d have to skin and cook the meat before he could eat it. He cast a sidelong glance at the dragon, which was devouring the rest of the beast with messy greed.
Khollo quickly skinned the leg with his belt knife and butchered the meat, setting the edible pieces on a flat stone to one side. By the time he had finished this task, the dragon was halfway through the rest of the beast.
What are you doing? The dragon asked curiously, cocking his head and looking at the pile of discarded bones and skin. Something wrong with food?
Khollo laughed. “No, the food is fine. I just have to cook it before I can eat it. I’m not a dragon. I can’t eat it raw.”
Oh. The dragon hesitated. Cook . . . with fire?
“Yes.”
Easy. The dragon leaned over and blew a blistering stream of fire on the meat that Khollo had set aside. When he closed his jaws again, the stone was glowing and the meat was cooked, almost charred, on the surface. Khollo sliced into a chunk with his knife, testing it. A little rare at the center, but not bad.
“Thanks,” Khollo said, taking a bite. “That saved a lot of time.” He took another bite and grimaced. “Wouldn’t mind finding a few wild herbs or spices to go with it though.”
Meat is good, the dragon countered. Doesn’t need green things mixed in.
“Maybe not for you, but you’re a dragon. I’m not.” Khollo took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. “I just realized,” he said, swallowing. “I don’t know your name.”
Name?
“What you’re called.”
I am a dragon.
Khollo nodded. “I know. But you need another name too. I’m a human, but I am called Khollo.”
Khollo, the dragon mused. That is a nice name.
“So, what name should I call you by?”
The dragon snapped up a foreleg from the steer, crunching it between his teeth. Vertaga called me ‘monster’ or ‘beast’. Sometimes ‘creature’.
“It’s the vertaga who are the monsters,” Khollo growled. “Not you.”
The dragon bent to its kill once more. I will think on this, he announced. I must choose the right name.
“You’ll have plenty of time,” Khollo sighed, looking around the plains.
The dragon tore the last bit of flesh from the steer carcass and rubbed its nose against its left foreleg, cleaning it of gore. What now?
Khollo shrugged and got to his feet, sheathing his belt knife. “We might as well explore the valley some, I suppose. Not much to see out here on the plains.”
The dragon rustled its wings in anticipation and extended a foreleg to Khollo. The young warrior clambered up, realizing as he did that in the space of a single day he was becoming accustomed to riding the dragon. While he was puzzling over this, the dragon lurched skyward, nearly throwing Khollo off. Khollo grabbed frantically at the spine in front of him and leaned forward, struggling to keep down his breakfast.
They flew straight back south, towards the mountains and over them, gliding back into the green valley once more. It was as lush as Khollo remembered from the previous night, overgrown and steamy. He peered downwards, looking for anything out of the ordinary, some discovery that lay in wait.
I like this place, the dragon announced. The heat makes me feel alive! And the mountains protect us from any foe.
Khollo nodded. “Any army passing through would have a difficult time gaining access to this place,” he agreed. “There are plenty of passes, but they all look too narrow to – ”
He broke off suddenly as he caught sight of a gap in the foliage below. Khollo squinted downward, and noticed a curious arrangement of stones.
“Did you see that?” he asked the dragon, pointing.
What?
“The stones, almost like buildings,” Khollo explained. The dragon wheeled around curiously, looking for the place. Khollo peered down at the trees, thinking furiously.
Khollo saw the break in the trees again. “There!” he said quickly. “Can you take us down?”
The dragon folded its wings and they dropped like a rock. At the last moment, the great wings stretched wide again and they floated, a few meters above the ground. Then, with a few flaps, the dragon settled on the ground, shaking the earth. But its claws did not sink into the earth. Khollo distinctly heard them scratch on stone.
Khollo looked around and saw that they had landed in a long, roughly rectangular clearing. Here and there, stone pavers showed through the underbrush and leaf litter. Khollo dismounted and knelt beside the dragon, scraping away a layer of soil. Underneath he found gray stone, large, perfect squares of it, worn smooth by time.
“Help me rip some of this green away,” Khollo said excitedly. The dragon nosed at the stone curiously, then, eyes gleaming, raked a clawed foot across the ground, uprooting grass and bushes and scouring the area of dirt. Underneath was more stone.
“What did we find?” Khollo wondered aloud. “Who put this here, and why?” He began clearing more dirt from the stones. “Maybe there will be writing on them that will tell us what place we have discovered.”
The dragon went at the task with a will, using his heavy, clawed feet to scrape dirt and vegetation away, and sweeping the ground with its heavy tail. Whenever he moved, his claws clicked loudly on the stone below. By the time they had cleared a space large enough for four dragons to stand on comfortably, they still had not found any identifiable markings on the visible surface.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” Khollo observed, mopping sweat from his brow. “Maybe we should try something else.”
Like searching the stone house?”
